On a Torn-Away World Part 29

"More refugees from inland, eh?" exclaimed a rough but cordial seaman, who proved to be the captain's harpooner and boat-steerer. "We have some traders from Aleukan already with us."

"Ah!" said Professor Henderson, "we have been looking for them. They have arrived in safety, then?"

"But nearly frozen," said the boat-steerer.

"And where are the people of Nigatuk?"

"We believe all those not killed or burned in the first earthquake were taken off by the United States revenue cutter _Bear_. She sailed for Bering Sea some time before the final earthquake."

"And where is the ocean?" demanded Phineas Roebach.

"It was sucked away in a great tidal wave and left the _Orion_ high and dry yonder," said the sailor.

It was evident that the sailors had no appreciation of the real happening. They did not know that they were cut off from the old earth by thousands of miles of s.p.a.ce. "Your bark's name is _Orion_, then?"

queried the professor.

"Aye, aye, sir," said the boat-steerer. "The _Orion_, out o' New Bedford; the only whaler under sail in these seas, I reckon. Most o'

them that's after the ile is steam kettles," he added, thus disrespectfully referring to the fleet of steam whalers from San Francisco.

"But we got 'em all beat, I guarantee," he added, grinning. "We was chasin' a school of big fellers when the sea sucked out and left us an' them high and dry. But the skipper says the sea will come back in good time and mean-times we gits the ile."

Just then the boat-steerer was sending off several sled loads of blubber to his ship, and Jack and Mark, with the professor and their companions, accompanied the cargo.

The _Orion_ was a fine big bark and was commanded by an old-fashioned Yankee skipper of the type now almost extinct. He welcomed the travelers aboard his ship most cordially, the ship itself all of a stench with the trying blubber, and overshadowed by a huge cloud of black smoke, for the fires were fed with waste bits of blubber and fat.

The skipper and crew were literally "making hay while the sun shone,"

for there were more than twenty huge leviathans within a circuit of ten miles from the bark, and they proposed to have every one of them before the flocks of seabirds, or the bears, should find and destroy the stranded creatures.

"We'll fill every barrel and be ready to sail home with our hatches battened down when the sea comes back," declared Captain Sproul.

"And you are quite sure the ocean will return and float your bark?"

queried the scientist, patiently, for he saw that it was quite as useless to explain what had happened to this hard-headed old sea-dogas it was to talk to Phineas Roebach.

"You can bet your last dollar it will come back, Mr. Henderson,"

declared Captain Sproul.

"Why do you think so?" asked the professor.

"Why, the ocean always _has_ been here; ain't it?"

"I expect so--within the memory of man."

"Then it will come back!" cried the skipper of the _Orion_, as though that were an unanswerable argument.

"But what do you call that up yonder?" asked Professor Henderson, pointing to the calm-faced earth rolling tranquilly through the heavens, while her satellite, the moon, likewise appeared.

"We certainly are blessed with moons," said Sproul, nodding. "And mighty glad of it I be. As the day is so short now, and the sun is so hot, two moons to work by is a blessing indeed to us whalers."

"And you don't consider that new planet anything wonderful?" Jack Darrow asked Captain Sproul.

"Not at all. We often see what they call sun dogs; don't we?"

"I have seen such things," admitted the youth, while he and Mark smiled at the old skipper's simplicity.

"That double moon is like that, I reckon," said Sproul, and that ended the discussion.

CHAPTER XXIX

WHEN THE SEA ROLLED BACK

The boys were interested in this novel kind of whaling; but they were more deeply interested in the possible outcome of the situation in which they, and their friends, and the fur-traders, and the bark's crew, were all placed.

The tearing away of this piece of our planet, on which the boys and their companions now sailed, must end finally in some terrible catastrophe. It would be catastrophe enough if the torn-away world never returned to the earth, but sailed forever and ever, round and round its parent planet. Our heroes and their companions would then be marooned without hope of rescue on a fragmentary planet in s.p.a.ce, the said planet doomed to become a mere lump of dead and frozen matter adrift in the universe.

Professor Henderson set up the powerful telescope that he had brought, with his other instruments, all the way from the wrecked flying machine left in the creva.s.se of the great glacier, and busied himself in filling his notebooks with data relating to the movements of this new planet, and of the strange and remarkable incidents occurring each hour of their imprisonment on the island in the air.

Jack and Mark, however, found time to help the whalemen secure the oil from the carca.s.ses of the stranded leviathans which surrounded the _Orion_. They, with old Andy and Phineas Roebach, began to go out with the parties of blubber-hunters to guard them at their work. For now great troops of polar bears appeared from the north, evidently making their way from the fields of ice that likewise had become stranded on the old sea bed; and these white bears were as savage and as hungry as were the Kodiak bears that infested the river.

The two chums, thus engaged, had an adventure one day that they were never likely to forget. Seeing that there were several of the huge walruses imprisoned in the lakes of salt water remaining in the ocean bed, Jack and Mark desired to kill one for its great tusks. They knew where there was one of the beasts--half as heavy as an elephant--and not far from one of the last whales the crew of the _Orion_ were cutting up. The boys were guarding this special party of seamen at their work, but had seen no bears since sunset.

There was plenty of light, for both the earth-planet was shining on them and her moon likewise, although the latter was now in her last quarter. Quite sure that the sailors would not be molested, Jack and Mark crept away toward the pool where they had seen the walrus.

They soon found, however, that they were not alone. Washington White had come over from the bark, and seeing what the boys were about he followed them.

"Is you suah 'nuff gwine ter try an' shoot dat hugeous wallingrust, an' pull his teef?" he whispered. "Yo' boys will git killed, some day, foolin' wid sech critters."

"You'd better go back, then," said Mark, "if you are afraid."

But the darkey wanted to see how the boys proposed to go about the work of capturing the walrus. Jack had prepared a long and stout line with a whale lance at one end and a sharp spike at the other. The boys very well knew that the bullets from their rifles would make little impression on the walrus. They had to go about his, capture in a different way from shooting bears.

The salt water lake in which the walrus was trapped was perhaps a mile across, and there were several blow-holes in it. The party had to lie down behind a barrier of seaweed that the wind had tossed up in a great windrow, and wait for the walrus to appear at one hole or another.

When his fierce head came into view Jack and Mark, with their satellite, Washington, crept around to the rear of the creature, and then made a swift but careful advance upon his position. They reached a spot upon the ice not more than ten yards from the blow-hole without attracting the attention of the walrus.

Instantly Jack motioned his chum to stand ready to drive the steel spur at the end of the line into the ice to hold the beast, while he went forward with the harpoon. Right at the edge of the broken ice, within ten feet of the monster, Jack Darrow stood a moment with the weapon poised.

He swung back his body and arm, aimed true for the spot behind the shoulders of the walrus, and then drove the iron home with all his strength.

The harpoon sank deep, and a mighty roar burst from the lips of the stricken beast. Mark drove down the steel peg, stamping on it to fix it securely in the ice. The walrus threw his huge body around and came half out of the water upon the ice to reach his tormentor. But Jack was ready for this move, and he sprang back, out of danger, and picked up his rifle.

The ice of course broke under the walrus for yards around. His fierce little eyes seemed to take in every move of his tormentors. He saw both boys (for Mark, too, had reached his gun) spreading out on either hand to get in fatal shots if they could. Meanwhile Washington White stood on the line close to the peg in the ice so that the beast could not jerk free.

"Take him in the eye, if you can, Mark!" shouted Jack. "The cap of blubber he wears will act like a cushion if we shoot him in the head."

But before either of them could obtain a satisfactory mark, the beast sank from sight. He had broken the ice for some yards toward the place where the end of the line was fastened, and he now had plenty of slack.